The current linguistic landscape of Mexico is worlds apart from the country’s long history. Today, the vast majority of Mexicans speak Spanish, many of them monolingually. But in the past, the people who inhabited the lands that make up Mexico spoke hundreds of unrelated languages, living in their own nations and cultures. Nahuatl, as the language of the former Aztec Empire, and the Mayan languages, maintain the largest presence in Mexico today, but many other indigenous languages, such as Western Tarahumara, are still spoken by many people today.
As the name suggests, Western Tarahumara is the western variant of the larger Tarahumara language group. Western Tarahumara is the second-largest variety of the language, accounting for around 40,000 speakers, whereas the biggest variant, Central Tarahumara, boasts around 55,000 speakers. The other variants have only a few hundred speakers each. Western Tarahumara enjoys vigorous use in the community, used in education, business, and administration, but it still faces significant pressure from Spanish. To help support this important indigenous language, we at TranslationServices.com have proudly put together our own Western Tarahumara translation team.
Send us a message today to ask about a free quote for our Western Tarahumara translation services.
A quick analysis of Western Tarahumara
Mexico’s southern regions are where you’ll find most of the country’s extant indigenous languages today, but Western Tarahumara is one of the languages still spoken in the north. Specifically, it’s spoken in southwestern portions of the state of Chihuahua. The language, which native speakers call Rarámuri, is related to Nahuatl, as both belong to the Uto–Aztecan language family, but the relation is extremely distant. Other relatives of Western Tarahumara include languages spoken in the US, such as Hopi, O’odham, and Shoshoni.
In terms of grammar, Western Tarahumara’s word order is quite flexible, easily changing to add emphasis to different elements of a sentence, but the basic, unmarked word order is subject-object-verb. However, indirect objects tend to come after the verb, as do words or phrases that indicate time or location. In storytelling, Western Tarahumara speakers often adopt an object-verb-subject word order, which is used as a basic word order in only 1% of languages. The language also encodes evidentiality into its verbs, allowing speakers to specify whether the information they’re conveying is something they know directly or have only heard or are inferring. With so many features that differ from English, Western Tarahumara can be a hard language to provide translation services for, but that’s why we only hire native speakers for our team.
Your Western Tarahumara translation needs are our command.
No matter what kind of Western Tarahumara translation services you’re looking for, we’re ready to help you. To ensure coverage of different varieties of Western Tarahumara, we’ve hired native-speaking translators from all over the state of Chihuahua (and we also cover Central Tarahumara translation services, if you’re interested!). With experience in translation and pride in their language, our Western Tarahumara translators eagerly provide translation services both to and from their indigenous language.
We’ve also tried to build a Western Tarahumara translation team that’s maximally diverse in terms of our translators’ experience and competencies. That means we can offer specialized translation services for academics, businesspeople, artists, content creators, and more. Of course, since Western Tarahumara is an endangered minority language, our scope is inevitably limited, but if you have any special requests, let us know—we’ll always do our best to accommodate you. The same applies if you’re working with a text that includes esoteric language and you’d like a translator who understands your field—simply let us know, and we’ll match you with the best-suited Western Tarahumara translator on our team.
For the best Western Tarahumara translation services in the industry, reach out to us and place your first order today!